


Indispensable

by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Episode: s04e09 Miller's Crossing, M/M, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-17 04:02:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1373230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode tag for "Miller's Crossing."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indispensable

“I never meant for any of this to happen,” Wallace sobs down onto the picture of Caleb and Madison. He’s crying openly, snotting through his fingers where he’s clutching his face, and John waits until his cries have reached a hysterical pitch to speak.

“You can make this right,” John says.

“What? How?” Wallace pulls his hands away and wipes them on his thighs. His tears pool on Madison’s head, distorting her features and rendering her grotesque. “How?”

John leans in, keeping his voice pleasant and conversational. “Your daughter is dead because you screwed up. We would have helped you if you’d just asked instead of kidnapping our people. But you didn’t ask. You got in way over your head, Wallace. You played God and it backfired.” John pauses, his hands trembling under the table where Wallace can’t see. “You didn’t even make the damn things right. Even if your scientists had correctly written the nanite code, she’d still be dead. Because of you.”

Wallace is crying again—abjectly, pitifully—and John feels like throwing up. He’s wound so tightly he thinks he might shatter, but he can’t afford the time to calm himself. Sergeant Peters is stationed outside the lab, but John knows that if Rodney really wants to get inside—and he does—eventually he will.

“You’re never leaving this mountain,” John says. “You’re already dead. Might as well make that mean something.”

Wallace swallows audibly, a thick and disgusting sound. “You want to feed me to the Wraith.”

The back of John’s neck prickles and he forces himself to keep his hands relaxed and at his sides. “Yes.”

Wallace picks up the photo and slides his fingers across its wet surface. John waits, breathing deeply in and out through his nose. When Wallace finally speaks, he sounds relieved. “I’ll do it.”

John doesn’t give him time to reconsider. He pushes his chair from the table with a bone-jarring scrape and takes Wallace firmly by the elbow. Wallace shuffles down the corridor beside him, head down, tears still dripping from his chin and soaking into the collar of his shirt. In the lab, the Wraith is hunched over and groaning, strangely sibilant sounds that grate on Sheppard’s nerves. Wallace walks much more slowly now that the end is near and Sheppard hauls him along until they’re standing before the Wraith. John pushes Wallace, who stumbles forward a few steps.

“For me, Sheppard?” the Wraith says. “Perhaps the honor I bestowed on you when we were rescued was not so misplaced after all.”

John’s belly goes cold but he says nothing.

The Wraith grips Wallace by one shoulder and places his hand on Wallace’s chest. Wallace screams. John makes himself watch as Wallace’s body collapses, as his hair turns white and his bones erode, until he finally stops begging John to help him. He’s looking Wallace in the eye when he finally dies. John figures he owes the man that much. The Wraith claps Sheppard on the back and Sheppard flinches, moves away until he runs out of space.

Two airmen stuff Wallace into a body bag. They’re just pulling up the zipper when John opens the door for Rodney. John looks at the floor, at Rodney’s shoes, at the tiny stain on the left wrist of his hoodie—anywhere but Rodney’s face. John is certain that he and Rodney talked, but later when he’s vomiting into the toilet of his guest quarters, he doesn’t remember what they said. He vomits until there’s nothing left to bring up but bile and then he sits on the cold tile with his back against the wall and waits for his body to stop trembling. John feels detached, as if a part of himself has been watching this day happen from very far away. He thinks the worst part is that given similar circumstances, he’d do the same thing all over again.

He’s still sitting there when Rodney opens his door and walks right inside. Rodney sits on the floor beside John and they don’t talk for a long time. 

“You lied to Wallace,” Rodney says finally. “I watched the surveillance tape. You told him we would’ve helped him if he’d asked and maybe, but probably not.”

John isn’t sure what to say. He still hasn’t looked Rodney in the face. He’s afraid of what he’ll see there.

“You killed a man for me,” Rodney says and John looks up. The expression on Rodney’s face is open, raw and exposed, a mixture of anger and fear and affection that makes John’s chest ache.

“Yeah,” John says. “I did.” 

Rodney shifts until their legs are touching at the hip and the ankle and the knee, until all John feels is the solidity of muscle and bone resting against his own. John closes his eyes, synching up his breath with Rodney’s, and they sit that way until Ronon radios that Jeannie is awake.


End file.
